Mitt Romney apparently confuses children

Politicians have held babies ever since there were politicians and babies. But this go around, one politician is getting taken to task over the practice

America, like every other country on earth, denies babies the right to vote.

But that’s never stopped political candidates on the campaign trail from trying to win babies’ approval. The history of American politicking is a long unbroken saga of politicos holding babies, kissing babies, breathing germs on babies and, in Mitt Romney’s case, confusing babies.

Mitt Romney Confusing Children is the brand-new Tumblr blog – its earliest post only dates back to Feb. 7 at 3:12 pm – showcasing photos of Candidate Romney not merely confusing children—as he did to the child in that first post—but occasionally terrifying them as well.

The blog was inspired by a post on the Final Boss Form blog earlier that day: a collection of photos captioned “Pictures of Mitt Romney confusing children,” which in turn were re-posted from an identically named slideshow put up by Talking Points Memo earlier that week.

The Mitt Romney Confusing Children Tumblr blog displays the photos without captions or commentary; that’s left up to anyone forwarding the pictures to their friends. When Voteformickeymouse re-blogged the terrified-child pic on her own Tumblr account, she wrote a caption on behalf of the crying baby: “Help meeeeeeee~~~~~ I DON’T WANNA LOSE MAH SOUL.”

Canceltheham re-posted a photo of a little boy wearing a distinctly “meh” expression. The caption reads “I am also unconvinced”.

On Twitter the photos are generating lots of buzz, mostly from viewers of the original Talking Points Memo slideshow. One photo inspired @Michaeltritter to ask, “Has no one seen THE DEAD ZONE?” (In that movie, a political candidate under fire by a would-be assassin protected himself by grabbing a child to use as a human shield. Romney’s pose in the picture bore an unfortunate resemblance to the movie politico.)

Josh Marshall of TPM tweeted one photo with the caption, “In college, Mitt lettered all four years in the toddler toss. Used to be an Olympic sport.” Another picture inspired him to ask, “Why is Mitt tossing this small child into mosh pit?”

And the photo of the “meh” little boy inspired a cynical observation from @UltraVerified: “Children have natural BS detector built in that school beats out of them. Kids are young, its still working.”

This election is supposed to be different. Donald Trump has stormed to clear frontrunner status in the Republican presidential primaries over the last month. No one quite like Trump has ever been in this position, 15 points ahead of his closest competitor, the neurosurgeon Ben Carson. The two people leading the 2016 GOP primary have never served in any political office.